The Last Temp-tation
By Ritija Gupta

I couldn't eat breakfast. After swallowing all my pride, there wasn't much room left for food. My suits, still hanging limply in my closet, were dull and powerless having been neglected the last few months. But it didn't matter—I wasn't going to be doing anything special with them. Going to a temp agency is like going on a blind date with someone who has been described as having a "nice personality"—you don't really feel the need to go out of your way. My rumpled suit and a recently botched hair dye job combined with my gnawed-off fingernails to create an interesting image of a businesswoman gone feral. I had been in the wild too long.

One has to consider where I was, and how I got there. I was broke. Not broke like "hey, I'm not going to get an appetizer right now, I'll just stick with an entrée." This was "I'll bet that kid has some lunch money—you hold him down" kind of broke. Wondering where you can sell your blood, that kind of broke. Was I coming out of a meth bender? Did I lose it all in the stock market? Did I have an addiction to buying luxury items at the expense of all else? No, no, no. I simply exercised some bad judgment. After graduating from one of the most prestigious colleges in the country and getting a Master's degree from another of the most prestigious universities in the country, I found out late last year that I had gotten into an Ivy League business program. I mention these not to brag, but to self-deprecate, to demonstrate how a laudable pedigree doesn't preclude finding one's self in dire circumstances. Because even with all these degrees and some substantial job experience behind me, I still found myself in an office with fake flowers, a color scheme out of Riker's penitentiary, and a Rita Cosby-voiced receptionist wondering if I was ever going to work again.

I quit my job last fall, finding it a bad fit, hating the travel and the general atmosphere. I had been promised a really excellent position with a friend of a friend—a position I naively believed would pull through and then never materialized (a government contract had a hiring freeze, and I found myself more jaded than ever). I had been throwing myself into the Chicago theater scene which pays in encouragement instead of money, and while it was entertaining and engaging, I still found myself wondering when I'd be able to start buying brand name cereal again. My friends and family were incredibly patient and kind to me, but it was time to get back in gear. With only a few weeks left in Chicago before I started preparing in earnest for school, it was hard to find anyone who was willing to take me on in any meaningful capacity.

So, that was how I found myself in a room with a few other people testing my skills on Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I took a typing test, which made me feel like I should be wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a perky little ponytail, and found out that I only type about 80 words a minute, which surprised me. I "corrected" a faux document that must have come to the company from some Eastern Bloc country where employees named Igor wrote to managers named Vaclav about cardboard boxes. The Excel and Powerpoint tests were unnerving. The program used dummy interfaces from versions of those programs that I hadn't seen since high school. The only other people in the room were middle-aged women who seemed nice enough but were clearly hunting and pecking their way through the assignment. It felt unfair—no doubt these women had a lot of value to give, and were probably amazing at whatever they were doing before they showed up at "the agency," but now were being cut down by these inane tests.

Nevertheless, I kept my head down and did my work, a strategy that has served me time and time again, and when the results of my test were read by the agent assigned to me, she was impressed by my skills. Pathetically enough, the results validated my self-esteem somewhat. It was as though I were being praised for tying my shoes correctly, or remembering to brush my teeth. As my agent and I discussed the particulars around my situation, she asked me how long I'd be in town.

"Oh, you know, only for a few more weeks. I'm actually moving soon to go to business school out East."

I got the desired response—an eyebrow raise and a slight smile. It was my attempt to distance myself, to justify my being there by assuring her, and myself, that being a temp was very, very temporary. That I was looking forward to something bigger and brighter and I'd leave this whole piece of my life behind shortly. That I was somehow better than this place and was here almost as a sociological experiment.

Which is, of course, a complete delusion. My first Master's degree didn't save me from temping—what's the guarantee the second one would? What did I know about the other temp candidates? Did I just assume I was slumming amongst crackheads and the hopeless? And if so, what joy was there in that, if that was the truth—that suddenly all my education, the massive investment my parents made in my upbringing couldn't keep me from this whole ordeal, from—temping?

And then it hit me. Rent was due in a few days and I really didn't want to be evicted. Money, or lack of it, is a great equalizer and regardless of what I thought my future held, my present demanded immediate attention. Temping, for all its stigma in my mind, for all the soulless filing I knew I'd be consigned to, the Excel monkey tasks, the repetitive busy work that would numb my brain, would at least pay me enough to stay sheltered, well-fed, with even perhaps enough left over to go out occasionally. Temping would at least allow me the dignity of choices once I left the office. Man cannot live on arrogance alone.

——

Ritija Gupta just realized that all the hope for her family's future lies in her 15-year old cousin. Good luck, kiddo.

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